HABAŞ Aliağa steel plant blast: death toll rises to at least 17
The death toll from the HABAŞ Aliağa iron and steel plant explosion near İzmir has risen to at least 17, BBC News reported, after the Health Minister said a critically injured worker had died. President Erdoğan had earlier said 16 were killed. BBC reports 12 injured; Hürriyet (DHA/AA) also reports 17 dead. Investigations are under way and detentions have been reported.
UPDATE, 10 Nov 2026, 06:31 Romania time: the death toll from the HABAŞ Aliağa steel plant explosion has risen to at least 17, BBC News reported. President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan had said on Monday that 16 people were killed and 13 injured, two of them seriously (AA, AP); Health Minister Kemal Memişoğlu later announced that a critically injured worker had died, taking the toll to 17, according to BBC. BBC says 12 others were injured, all the dead and injured were workers at the plant, and some people were believed to be still under the rubble, according to İzmir Governor Süleyman Elban. Hürriyet (DHA/AA) also reported 17 dead and 12 injured, one of them seriously. Detentions: BBC Türkçe, citing agencies, reported five people detained; Hürriyet reported seven detained in the investigation. The figures of 6 dead and eight missing given earlier in this article are superseded.
UPDATE, 9 Nov 2026, 14:42 Romania time: the İzmir Governor’s Office raised the death toll at the HABAŞ Aliağa steel plant to six. One critically injured person who had been taken to hospital and two people pulled from the rubble later died, bringing the total to six, the governor’s office said in a statement carried by Anadolu Agency. Search and rescue for people still under debris was continuing without interruption, the same statement said. The Associated Press, citing the governor’s office, reported 13 people injured (two critically) and eight workers still missing under rubble. AFAD, firefighters and police were leading the search, with support from Manisa AFAD; the fire that followed the blast had been extinguished, AA reported.
Justice Minister Akın Gürlek said the Menemen Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office had opened an urgent investigation and assigned four prosecutors, with prosecutors and a forensic expert team examining the scene while rescue continued (AA). Labour and Social Security Minister Vedat Işıkhan said the Social Security Institution (SGK) had assigned a chief inspector to look into the accident (AA). HABAŞ said in a company statement that a distressing accident had occurred during planned maintenance work on one of the electric-arc furnaces, that emergency teams treated those affected and that the injured were taken to hospital, and that official inquiries into the causes were under way with the relevant agencies (AA). The governor’s earlier initial assessment — that an overhead crane broke away and fell into an arc furnace during liquid-steel casting — remains the official working hypothesis reported by AA; the company statement does not contradict that the site was an electric-arc furnace area, but attributes the work as planned maintenance rather than casting. Both accounts are attributed; the cause is not treated as finally established.
An explosion at the HABAŞ Demir Çelik AŞ iron and steel facilities in Aliağa’s Bozköy neighbourhood, İzmir province, on Monday, 9 November 2026, was followed by a fire, Turkish state news agency Anadolu Agency reported, citing the İzmir Governor’s Office.
According to the governor’s office statement carried by AA, initial findings indicated that three people were killed and 14 were injured, three of them seriously. The wounded were taken to hospitals in the area. Search and rescue teams were continuing without interruption to reach 10 people trapped under debris after the blast, the statement said.
The same official account said the incident was initially assessed as having occurred during liquid-steel casting, when an overhead crane broke away and fell into an arc furnace. Interior Minister Mustafa Çiftçi said coordinated search-and-rescue and firefighting operations were under way and that the injured were being monitored in hospital.
Witnesses near the plant told AA the blast was extremely powerful and shook the ground, with a dust cloud and black smoke rising afterward. Early social-media posts that described the site as an oxygen-cylinder filling section, or that gave only injury figures without deaths, did not match the governor’s office tally published by Anadolu Agency; those posts are not treated here as confirmed detail.
Figures and the cause assessment remain those of the İzmir Governor’s Office as of the AA report on 9 November and may change as rescue and investigation continue.